So in the VOTE thread I saw at least one other person saw that in https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/flex/sdk/4.14.1/rc1/README in the 'Prepare your system' section, it looks like some funny character encoding:
Flash Player ‘playerglobal.swc’ (Pic @http://files.falkensweb.com/f/e8d087bbb8/) The same file appears OK in the unpacked archive, however. So something in the web server or transfer process to it has broken it ? Tom